1. Virginia Woolf Introduction

2. What do you think of when you hear the words “Victorian” and “modern”?

3. “In or about December, 1910, human character changed.” ◦ Virginia Woolf

4. New Thinking in last half of 19 th century: ◦ Darwin’s theory of evolution  Can we rely on religion for all the answers like we always have? ◦ Freud’s theory of the unconscious  Are we really in control of ourselves? ◦ Immensely influential in changing human thought

5. 1882-1941 Life spans two World Wars and the collapse of the English empire Movie “The Hours” explores her life

6. Biography Father, Leslie Stephen: ◦ eminent Victorian literary critic ◦ Agnostic (Woolf herself was anti-religious) ◦ Educated Virginia at home. Mother, Julia Stephen, a noted Victorian beauty: echoes of her in Mrs. Ramsay Sister Vanessa: painter and leader of the English avant-garde

7. Woolf’s Later Life Suffered a series of nervous breakdowns beginning in 1904, the year her father died Died of suicide by drowning May have suffered from bipolar disorder

8. Important Places to Woolf London St. Ives in Cornwall

9. The Bloomsbury Group Bohemian lifestyle Defying convention Virginia married a member of it, Leonard Woolf, in 1912

10. Partnership with Leonard She and Leonard founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful business Female writer, publisher, literary critic Like most women of her generation, greatly impacted by WW I Many of her friends were killed or wounded

11. Inter-War Period (1919-1933) She did her major creative and critical work During this time major fascist and socialist dictatorships arise on the Continent There are far away echoes of this and the war in TTL (weather/nature take on a symbolic function)

12. Woolf’s Style You will hate this book….if you expect it to be like any novel you’ve ever read Woolf didn’t care about writing something like what had been written over the last 100 years Wanted to include what those novels had left out Aiming at something NEW… and she achieved it

13. What if a novel were a painting? Experiment Question: ◦ Can sentences (which are linear) in a linear work like a novel do what a photo or movie or painting does : convey the sense of a multitude of thoughts, feelings and actions taking place all at the same time?

14. Dancing at the Moulin de Galette

15. Conventions she uses: Stream-of-consciousness: ◦ She is emulating a painter trying to reproduce an exact moment in time fully, but doing it in novel form To The Lighthouse: collective stream-of- consciousness. ◦ One voice flows into another! (Because while I am thinking thoughts you are thinking thoughts, right? So how do you represent that?)

16. Her Theory of the Novel She is a woman The novel in the early 1900s was a genre dominated by men She believed a woman novelist had to create her own form ◦ Felt Jane Austen was one woman who had done that She believed the conventional commercial novel had become a cliché

17. Her goal… Convey consciousness, particularly feminine consciousness, which she felt had been left out of earlier novels ◦ Emotion ◦ Thought ◦ Insight

18. Kew Gardens

19. “Kew Gardens” Questions If this story is an experiment, what is Woolf experimenting with? What is she trying to represent? What stands out to you in the story? What is the point of view? What happens in this story? What themes or ideas can you find in it?